Jodi Arias case bumps a bigger story

By Howard Kurtz, CNN

Updated 10:02 AM ET, Thu May 9, 2013

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Kidnapped teens found decade later – Amanda Berry speaks in a video released on YouTube on Monday, July 8, thanking people for support and privacy. Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight escaped from a Cleveland home on May 6, 2013, after being held captive for nearly a decade.

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Kidnapped teens found decade later – Amanda Berry vanished a few blocks from her Cleveland home on April 21, 2003. She was 16.

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Kidnapped teens found decade later – Gina DeJesus speaks in the YouTube video.

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Kidnapped teens found decade later – Georgina "Gina" DeJesus was last seen in Cleveland on April 2, 2004, on her way home from school. She was 14 when she went missing.

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Kidnapped teens found decade later – Michelle Knight speaks in the YouTube video.

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Kidnapped teens found decade later – Knight was last seen on August 22, 2002, when she was 21.

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Photos: Kidnapped teens found decade later – In a handwritten note, Knight thanked Cleveland police for their efforts, saying she was overwhelmed with the support she had received from "complete strangers." The note was posted Wednesday, July 31, on the police's Second District Community Relations Committee Facebook page.

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Kidnapped teens found decade later – Residents gather outside a community meeting at Immanuel Lutheran Church on Thursday, May 9, to talk about the kidnapping case in Cleveland. Balloons were released as part of the ceremony.

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Kidnapped teens found decade later – FBI agents and other law enforcement officers stand outside suspect Ariel Castro's home in Cleveland on May 9. Castro, a former school bus driver, has been accused of holding three women captive for a decade in his house. He has also been charged with rape.

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Kidnapped teens found decade later – Castro hangs his head low while talking with his public defender, Kathleen DeMetz, during his arraignment on May 9.

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Kidnapped teens found decade later – Ada Colon prays during a vigil held in honor of the kidnapping victims in Cleveland on Wednesday, May 8.

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Kidnapped teens found decade later – Relatives of kidnapping victim Georgina "Gina" DeJesus hug after she returned to her parents' home in Cleveland on May 8.

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Kidnapped teens found decade later – Friends and neighbors cheer as a car carrying Amanda Berry arrives at her sister's house in Cleveland on May 8.

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Kidnapped teens found decade later – Gina DeJesus gives a thumbs up as she arrives at her family's house in Cleveland on May 8.

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Kidnapped teens found decade later – Ariel Castro was charged on May 8 with kidnapping the three women.

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Kidnapped teens found decade later – The family house of Gina DeJesus has been decorated by well-wishers on Tuesday, May 7.

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Kidnapped teens found decade later – Friends and relatives gather in front of the family house of DeJesus on May 7.

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Kidnapped teens found decade later – Well-wishers visit the home of the sister of Amanda Berry on Monday, May 6.

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Kidnapped teens found decade later – Investigators remove evidence from the house on Seymour Avenue in Cleveland where the three women were held.

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Kidnapped teens found decade later – An FBI forensics team meets outside the house where three women were held as they investigate the property.

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Kidnapped teens found decade later – An FBI forensics team member removes evidence from the house.

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Kidnapped teens found decade later – A relative of DeJesus brings balloons to the home of Amanda Berry's sister in Cleveland on May 7.

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Kidnapped teens found decade later – Children hold a sign and balloons in the yard of Gina DeJesus' family home in Cleveland on May 7.

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Kidnapped teens found decade later – Bystanders and media gather on May 7 along Seymour Avenue in Cleveland near the house where the three women were held captive.

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Kidnapped teens found decade later – A bystander shows the front page of The Plain Dealer newspaper to a friend outside of the house on Seymour Avenue on May 7.

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Kidnapped teens found decade later – Cleveland Deputy Chief of Police Ed Tomba, center, speaks at a news conference to address details of the developments.

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Kidnapped teens found decade later – The house where the three women were held captive in Cleveland was the home of Ariel Castro, who was arrested and is being held pending charges in the case.

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Kidnapped teens found decade later – FBI agents remove evidence from the house May 7.

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Kidnapped teens found decade later – A police officer stands in front of the broken front door of the house on May 7, where the kidnapped women escaped.

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Kidnapped teens found decade later – Neighbor Charles Ramsey talks to media as people congratulate him on helping the kidnapped women escape on Monday, May 6. He helped knock down the door after he heard screaming inside.

It was a day of anguish and emotion -- and a revealing Rorschach test of media values.

In an age of school shootings and marathon bombings, hard-bitten journalists have grown accustomed to reporting on human depravity. But there is something about what happened in Cleveland that tears at the heart.

Howard Kurtz

Yes, the story went wall to wall, overshadowing virtually everything else, except for the Fox News coverage of the congressional hearing on the attack in Benghazi. But the crimes in Cleveland deserve to be big news precisely because they border on the unimaginable.

The Arias trial, in my view, is very different. It became a national soap opera because many media organizations were drawn to the graphic sexual testimony -- in voice mails, texts and so on -- that could be trumpeted for ratings and clicks. It was hardly big news when the unknown Arias killed her ex-boyfriend Travis Alexander in 2008 -- such murders are sadly common.

The level of savagery -- 27 stab wounds, a slit throat, a gunshot to the head -- may have been unusual, but it was the trial's explicit sexual evidence that provided the hook. Arias was soon slotted into the Amanda Knox/Casey Anthony category of attractive white women in trouble.

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Was the Arias case too intimate?

The Cleveland saga, by contrast, conjures up every parent's worst nightmare: three teenage girls disappearing for years, their fate unknown and, we now know, according to police, raped in captivity.

London's Daily Mail scored an interview with the son of suspect Ariel Castro, plus exclusive photos of Castro in the frame house where women were held. Since the British tabloids are known for paying for information, how did the Mail obtain from Anthony Castro what hordes of American journalists could not?

"We did not pay him either for the interview or for the photos," Daily Mail reporter Michael Zennie told me. "He spoke with us because he wanted to have his story represented."

Anthony Castro told the Mail in the interview that his father padlocked the doors leading to the basement, attic and garage where Amanda Berry and two other women were allegedly kept, never allowing his family inside.

"If it's true that he took her captive and forced her into having sex with him and having his child and keeping her hidden and keeping them from sunlight, he really took those girls' lives," Anthony Castro was quoted as saying, adding: "He deserves to be behind bars for the rest of her life."

The fast-moving Cleveland story does have its media circus aspects. On Wednesday the cable news channels, taking their cue from police, were bannering an expected public statement by Berry. But it was her sister, Beth Serrano, who spoke briefly to the assembled media mob, making a plea for the family's privacy.

And it was a little much when Berry's grandmother allowed a local station to videotape her first call from Amanda -- a moment that feels like it should have remained private.

In a more uplifting vein, Charles Ramsey, a local dishwasher who heard screams from the house and broke down the door, has been making the television rounds.

Many people are "saying you're a hero," CNN's Anderson Cooper told him.

"No, no, no," Ramsey replied. "Bro, I'm a Christian, an American, and just like you. We bleed same blood, put our pants on the same way."

Many questions remain, to say the least, about how the kidnapping succeeded for so many years and whether the police fell short. But whatever media excesses unfold in the coming days, the story of the Cleveland women commands our attention as a matter of human compassion. The sooner that Jodi Arias fades from the headlines, the better.